Building hacking together coin operated ball dispenser

[koifeeder]

Ok, so I got a week or so for Christmas break, I have some parts, can I build a coin op ball dispenser in a week? Lets Try!!

So here is the idea, basically take a bunch of junk laying around and make a 25 cents ball dispenser. I was going to try to make just a mechnical one, but I figured why not complicate things and make an electronic one! Word of warning, it won't be pretty, and I have extra hot glue sticks on standby.

One thing I have found out, is that the proximity ball sensors that are inside the machines are complicated to interface with. They are simply a coil of wire, but the interface sends an oscillating signal thru it and back, and the processor monitors that signal, when a ball passes thru, it stops the oscillation for a split second. I don't know how to build that circuit. so, I have some industrial automation proximity sensors that have all the electronics built in, only +, -, and output, easy to wire up. I have 3 choices for microcontroller, we'll see what works the best.
So far, in the heap I have:

• Pachinko machine back with motorized ball hopper
• Allen Bradley PLC Micro-controller
• Picaxe microcontroller
• Basic Stamp microcontroller
• Turck proximity sensor
• Coin mech out of an arcade

Also, the motor that runs the ball hopper is a 6 wire stepper motor, not necessarly hard to interface with, but would require some power transistors that I do not have. So I modified a small gear motor to take its place. We will see how that works.

I plan to use the upper ball hopper, ball dispenser, and winning ball counter plastic parts off the pachinko. Wish me luck